With the growth of the alternative/complementary medicine industry and the general perception in some areas that the products are “snake oil” remedies, there is a pressing need to ensure that products supplied by this alternative industry have reproducible efficacy and are safe for use by the general public. However, due to recent adverse publicity by the press and government regulators there is an absolute requirement for alternative medicines to meet strict guidelines regarding the quality of the raw materials and the method of manufacture. One of the major difficulties with alternative medicines is that the ingredients used are often composed of materials which in most cases may contain many different chemical compounds. Hence there is an enormous challenge involved to ensure efficacy and safety of the products for use by society. One of the major reasons for the lack of knowledge of the effectiveness of these products is that the alternative and complementary medical industry generally pride themselves on the fact these products are not animal tested, hence their claims cannot be validated.
Historically, the animal and plant oil industries are among the oldest in the world, hence procedures used in this industry are well established. In addition the industrial and medical applications, of which there are many, are well documented in the literature. However, many oils such as olive, evening primrose oil, flaxseed oil, cod liver oil and emu oil are used to treat a variety of medical conditions and diseases but virtually no attention has been paid to the difficulty in reproducing efficacy and safety data for these types of products. In fact, over the past thirteen years of animal and chemical testing of a large variety of many different types and batches of animal and plant oils, large variation in biological activity and chemical composition has been observed.
It has been increasingly recognised in this area that in order to increase the credibility of complementary/alternative medicines based on animal and plant extracts, particularly oils, quality control in terms of reproducibility of efficacy and safety data for these types of products is of foremost concern.